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On Baywatch Hawaii, Jason Momoa wore a bathing suit. On Stargate Atlantis, he wore barely more, topped by a five-pound tangle of dreadlocks (his own). As the second movie incarnation of Conan the Barbarian, he was stripped to the waist, otherwise clad in leather and loincloth. Same again for the half-naked warrior king Khal Drogo, setting female fans aflutter on Game of Thrones.

Bullet to the Head was a rare opportunity for Jason Momoa to act with his shirt on.

(Not to worry, ladies. As you can see, those biceps aren’t covered up the entire time.)

He also gets to play the villain for a change, as evil arch-nemesis to veteran tough guy Sylvester Stallone.

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“Fighting Rocky with an axe. I can’t think of anything cooler.”

Like any teenage boy growing up in the 1990s, action icons Stallone and Schwarzenegger were Momoa’s screen heroes. In 2011 he stepped into Schwarzenegger’s sandals as Conan. And now he’s trading blows with Stallone.

“He’s amazing,” Momoa says. “He’s exactly what you think he is, times 10. He’s a great man, and a good leader. He commands the set; he sets the tone. He’s very giving as an actor. He inspires people.”

Momoa in particular, who is already following Stallone’s early example by writing and directing his own film, Road to Paloma.

“I really wanted to learn from him how he balanced the writing, directing and acting . . . that’s no mean feat. I mean, he’s an Oscar-winning writer. You can’t say that about a lot of actors.

“And then to have the longevity that he has. He’s a bull. He’s 62 years old and he’s still got it.”

On screen, Momoa incurs Sly’s wrath by killing his partner and kidnapping his daughter. But the two are fairly evenly matched.

“One’s a hit-man, the other’s a mercenary,” Momoa explains. “Realistically, they’re both bad guys. I liked the competitiveness between the two. In another life they might have been best buds.”

But here they are most definitely not. There’s bad, and then there’s bad. And Momoa’s murderous mercenary is bad to the bone.

“The guy’s like a shark,” he grins. “He doesn’t talk. It’s like an old western. He speaks through his actions. That was fun to do.”

There was not a lot of dialogue in either of his two best-known roles, Conan and Game of Thrones’ Drogo.

Conan was another early inspiration, not so much from the movies, but going back to the original books, with their gorgeously painted Frank Frazetta covers, depicting muscled men and women with similarly massive chests.

“Those images seared into my soul,” he says. “You see him standing there on a pile of skulls, and it’s like, ‘Yeah, I want to be that guy.’ ”

There are a lot of other guys Momoa wants to be. “I don’t want to limit myself. You’ve got to try new things. People don’t know there are other sides to me. I mean, I’m not the guy you call for a romance movie.”

Game of Thrones fanatics would beg to differ: The Drogo/Dayenerys storyline was about as romantic as it gets.

“That was the ultimate role,” he says. “At the very beginning you hate him. But then at the end . . . I have so many fans now that are girls. The guys are like, ‘F--- yeah. I’d follow you into battle, dude.’ And at the same time the girls are like, ‘Hell yeah!’

“You get amped up watching Drogo. He’s a man’s man. You’re just waiting to see him go off.

“I’ve been very lucky. Roles like that are very rare.”

In his next film he’ll be covered up again — in fur. He’s playing a werewolf in the new David Hayter film, Wolves.

“It’s like Drogo in a wolf suit,” Momoa says. “It’s pretty primal. It’s the kind of werewolf movie we haven’t seen in a while.

“It’s my first time wearing full prosthetics. I wanted to attempt it, just so I could say I never want to do it again.”

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